Friday 31 January 2014

I'm officially in Year 3, and coursework is OVER

I see that I missed quite a few weeks there -- I'm so lazy! So the new semester has started, and with fewer hours of teaching than I'd anticipated. Without the additional pressure of assignment deadlines, I'm feeling quite free. Must remind self not to be lazy.

This is not forgetting that I have to set the wheels in motion for data collection. Unfortunately, the whole process with permission seeking (MOE) and then ethics clearance (Lancaster) is confusing and convoluted, and I'm probably not as thick-skinned in pushing things ahead as I ought to be. As I write this, I'm waiting for MOE to issue what they call in-principle approval so that I can apply for ethics approval from Lancaster. Only when ethics has been cleared can I get official approval from MOE. This really needs to be on a FAQ somewhere so that others don't end up running round in circles like me. I don't know what luck I have in getting everything settled by mid March.

My last 2 assignments were returned later than I'd expected, and while waiting I was working myself up to a state of paranoia. I had sleepless nights thinking that I might have failed the modules?! Of course I didn't. But even though I had half-expected it, the feedback was kind of demoralising. Of course, I'm a student and am still relatively unskilled at this stuff, but it seems that I haven't improved much since my first assignment. I don't know if the nature of the assignments is such that I find it difficult to produce better papers, or that I genuinely haven't come far, and so will really struggle when I write my thesis. I guess I'll find out.